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Kevin Sullivan had a unique journey through wrestling. He was a territorial heel attraction who became a noteworthy character in WCW, and may have become better known nowadays for his work behind the scenes with that promotion, where he was often involved in the creative process. The bedrock of his long, successful career in wrestling quite arguably came in the 1980s when his gimmick as the Prince of Darkness made him an absolute heat magnet in Florida. That work in and of itself quite arguably made him a legend of wrestling, but also established an aesthetic for his on-screen work and fans’ perceptions of him for decades to follow.
Kevin Sullivan Capitalized On The Public Consciousness With His Gimmick
In the early 1980s, public concern rose about the prospect of Satan worshipers. Between a boom in pop culture that dealt with occult themes and dubious reports about dark rituals happening across different locations in the US, conspiracy theories arose about Satanic influence overtaking the United States. Wrestle Joy chronicled a key angle in 1982 that built over a period of weeks in Championship Wrestling from Florida, capitalizing on the public discourse that was going on at the time.
Related: Kevin Sullivan Had One Of The Weirdest Careers In Wrestling HistoryKevin Sullivan’s former partner Steve Keirn warned fans that Sullivan had changed. Sullivan downplayed the concerns at first, before revealing himself to be the mastermind behind a sinister heel run by a young Jake Roberts, and ultimately leading a faction billed as The Army of Darkness. This run saw Sullivan reach new heights, including feuding with no lesser babyface star than Dusty Rhodes over the territory’s top title.
Kevin Sullivan’s Satanist Gimmick Informed His Work In WCW With The Dungeon Of Doom
Kevin Sullivan was in and out of Jim Crockett Promotions and WCW programming for a time, but hit a groove in 1994, when he feuded opposite Hulk Hogan. Sullivan wasn’t booked as much of a physical threat to The Hulkster. Rather, he carried forward a sinister persona that successfully sold him as a mastermind whose strategy included recruiting Brutus Beefcake to turn against his longtime best friend and bringing old rival John Tenta, as Avalanche, to WCW to form the Three Faces of Fear, a heel super group rallied against Hogan.
Related: 10 Things Fans Forget About The Dungeon Of Doom In WCWThis heel kingpin act only ramped up when Sullivan came to brand himself as The Taskmaster—a servant to The Master, leading the Dungeon of Doom faction. This group, as well as their run with The Horsemen as The Alliance to End Hulkamania, was all a bit hokey, but was nonetheless a reasonable enough fit to work with the last vestiges of Hogan’s initial babyface run before launching the nWo.
Kevin Sullivan’s Gimmick Led To Conspiracy Theories
One testament to how much buy-in Kevin Sullivan cultivated from fans around his Prince of Darkness gimmick was that it led to a controversial, dark conspiracy theory that Sullivan had something to do with the Benoit family tragedy in 2007.
The conspiracy theory looks back to Sullivan’s former marriage with Nancy Benoit, which included him booking her into a romantic angle with Chris Benoit that led to them actually getting together and her leaving Sullivan in real life. It was a classic example of performers seeming to work themselves into a shoot as the lines grew quite blurry across this angle and time of real-life turmoil.
From there, when what was widely accepted as a murder-suicide went down, resulting in the death of Chris, Nancy, and their son, a small, but vocal contingent of fans theorized Sullivan was responsible for the tragedy. Sullivan has publicly responded to the allegations, including in an interview with HannibalTV and seems to largely dismiss them as absurd, stemming from fans who bought into his Satanist gimmick a little too hard. For his part, Sullivan said people could believe what they wanted, though, while, in reality he's far from a Satanist, and regularly attends Catholic Church.
There’s been a great deal of conversation in wrestling in the last 25 years around the role of cool heels and whether they are counterproductive in the world of wrestling. Kevin Sullivan’s embrace of a more sinister persona is emblematic of a largely opposite aesthetic—not only not worrying about whether he was actually liked, but embracing a potentially dangerous character type that would cause fans to legitimately hate him. It was a daring gimmick not only for its time, but still stands out to this day as groundbreaking in its sensibilities.
